Toward evening, she leafed through some of the books she’d gotten, and ended up thoroughly baffled. Darren hadn’t been exaggerating the difference between old music theory and its modern equivalent. Before long she was completely lost among superpartients and superparticulars, sesquialters and sesquitertians, aliquot parts and harmonic middles, and the rest of it. It all probably made sense, she guessed, if you knew the terms, but she didn’t.
Finally, just before she got to work on dinner, she emailed Darren and asked him if he could point her to something that would explain the older music theory. After dinner and a long stint of piano practice she settled down on the futon, talked with Sho for a while, and sank into a companionable silence that ended only when a pseudopod patted her awake, just long enough to pull the futon out flat and get ready for bed.
She got an answering email from Darren the next morning after breakfast, suggesting that they meet on campus, and she spent some minutes in thought before answering. He’d shown no sign so far of trying to turn their acquaintance into a relationship, but she’d seen the thing happen often enough to be wary of his intentions. Still, she sent back a note agreeing, so long as they didn’t meet in Gurnard Hall—she was tired of the stares and silences there and didn’t want to try to talk about music theory in the midst of them. The answer came back almost at once, proposing a coffee shop in the basement of Tuchman Hall, the mathematics and engineering building on campus. Another exchange of emails settled the day and time, Tuesday at one.
By the time that was finished, she had just enough time to skin into clothes and walk to campus for her Monday classes. Walking through The Cave was far from a pleasant experience, with Jay brooding silently in a corner, and edged glances and murmurs from the other students following her all the way to the table where Rosalie sat. For that matter, Rosalie looked glum, though she forced a smile and said, “Hi, girl.”
“Hi, Ro.” Brecken sat down. “What’s up? You look like you’ve had a bad morning.”
“It’s nothing.” Brecken fixed her with a skeptical look, and after a moment she looked at the table. “Donna and I had a stupid fight. Don’t worry, we’ll get over it.”
Brecken said something more or less sympathetic, and Rosalie brightened up and started talking about a harpist she’d read about online who would be touring New Jersey a few months on. “Not with a band or anything, just her and her harp, and the article says she tours all over the country. I’m going to see if I can get tickets to one of her performances and learn a thing or two.”
“Thinking of touring solo?” Brecken asked.
That got an enthusiastic nod. “Yeah. The way the economy is these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of venues would rather have solo acts just because they’re cheaper.”
Brecken considered that. “Makes sense. Remember what you said about Barbara scooping the gigs out from under Jay?”
“Yeah.” Rosalie suddenly leaned forward. “Did you hear about what she’s up to now? A couple of people are saying that she’s doing a professor over in the English department.”
“What about Will?” Brecken asked, shocked.
“You’ll have to ask him,” said Rosalie. “Or not; she probably hasn’t told him.” She glanced at her cell phone. “Time to get going. You remember what today’s lecture’s on?”
“Modal harmonies.” Brecken got up, picked up her tote bag. “I want to see what he says about them. I may want to do some modal compositions.”
“You’re still doing the composition stuff?”
Brecken gave her a startled look. “Of course. I’m on composition track now, remember?”
Rosalie rolled her eyes, said, “Girl, get real,” and led the way to the elevators.
TUCHMAN HALL WAS A harsh soaring shape of glass and concrete, distinguishable from Gurnard Hall only in detail. The students who paced the corridors of the two buildings, though, couldn’t have looked more different if they’d come from separate planets. The engineering and math majors flaunted their geek status the way music majors flaunted their place in the cultural avant-garde. Brecken felt conspicuous as she went through glass doors to the main stair, and the looks she got from students as she headed for the basement told her that she wasn’t mistaken.
The coffee shop was as bleak as Vivaldi’s, but less crowded. Brecken got in line, bought a cup of coffee, and was looking for a table with a good view of the door when Darren showed up. A few minutes later they were sitting in one of the corners of the coffee shop, while Darren traced lines on the table with one finger and Brecken took notes as fast as her pen could move.
It took him less than half an hour to explain how the old books set out the ratios and proportions of music theory. As he finished, she began to nod. “Okay, that makes sense.” Glancing up at him: “I hope you’re planning on a teaching career.”
That got her his ungainly grin. “If I can get a professorship, yeah.”
“Well, I hope you do.” Then: “So are these ratios the mathematics you’ve found in Bach and the other Baroque composers?”
“Well, in a sense. The stuff we’ve just talked about is all based on whole number ratios, but the deeper stuff is based on irrational numbers. Do you have anything by Bach handy?”
Brecken went rummaging in her tote bag, found the piano score of the Bach minuet she’d arranged for Rose and Thorn, and handed it to him. “Okay, good,” he said. “The really complex stuff is in his fugues, so this is better to start with.” He set the score down on the table between them and launched into an explanation of the way the different voices set out a set of strange mathematical ratios. After a few moments Brecken put her chin in her hand and stared at the music, trying to follow the patterns he traced out.
“I don’t think I understand more than a little of that,” she said once Darren finished, “but I think I want to understand a lot more.”
“Seriously?” He gave her an uncertain look.
“Seriously. There’s—” She paused, tried to find words. “You know how some buildings feel uneasy, and others make you feel comfortable? Like there’s, I don’t know, something that makes sense in the comfortable ones, and it’s not there in the others? Music is like that for me. Bach makes the world make sense. The modern stuff—” She shrugged. “Not so much, and I’m wondering if there’s more to that than tonality.”
“Yes,” he said. She glanced up at him again, startled, because his voice had gone low and intent. He was smiling, but it wasn’t his big ungainly grin; it was a little smile, fragile and very private. “It’s tonality, but not just tonality. I think I’ve understood part of what else Renaissance and Baroque composers did to get that effect.”
“I want to learn that,” said Brecken. “If that’s okay with you.”
He nodded. “That’s what my master’s thesis is about, so it isn’t any kind of secret.” Then, with the ungainly grin again: “Actually, it might help with my thesis to try to explain it all to someone who doesn’t have a math background. If you’re willing to be a guinea pig—”
She twitched her nose at him, and they both laughed. “Okay,” he said. “We should swing by the library sometime soon, then. They haven’t discarded their music collection—not yet—and there are a couple of pieces that make it really easy to see how all this works.”
It was getting on for two o’clock, so they compared schedules and arranged to meet the next morning at the library. Brecken had to work hard to keep her attention on Professor Kaufmann’s lecture at her orchestral arrangement class, and spent the entire walk home turning over in her mind the patterns she’d glimpsed during Darren’s explanation.
SHE SLEPT POORLY AGAIN and had bad dreams, but the next morning began well. Between Sho’s company and a better than usual flute practice, she left for campus in high spirits, met Darren at Hancock Library, and set out for Gurney Hall twenty minutes later with a hefty volume of Bach harpsichord music in her tote bag. On the way out of the library, though, she and Darren passed Rosalie going in,
and Rosalie gave them a startled glance and then looked away.
That was disconcerting, though not half as much so as the hostile stares she fielded yet again from the music students inside The Cave, or Jay’s silent but watchful presence over in one corner of the echoing space. It didn’t help that a few minutes after she’d settled at the usual table to wait, a woman she didn’t know—a senior, she guessed—came over to the table and asked, “You’re the one who’s doing some kind of rehash of Baroque music, right?” When Brecken nodded: “Hasn’t anybody told you why you shouldn’t waste your time on that sort of thing?”
Brecken gave her a long bleak look, and then said, “Yes. A lot of people seem to think it’s their job to tell me that.”
“They’re trying to help you,” the woman said, visibly ruffled. “So am I.”
That was more than Brecken could take. “Look,” she said. “I just want to write the music that matters to me, okay? You don’t think I should. Next to nobody in this department thinks I should. I understand that. I really do. Now will you please just go away?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said the woman. “You don’t have to get nasty about it.”
Brecken didn’t trust herself to speak again, just gave the woman a long steady look. “Well, I’m sorry I wasted my time,” the woman said, and walked away. Brecken pulled the book of Bach harpsichord pieces out of her tote bag and tried to distract herself with it until Rosalie finally showed up.
With that as prelude, her two classes that day and her time in the laundromat went past in a glum mood, and it took her an effort to restore her equilibrium before her piano lesson that afternoon. Even at the lesson, things felt out of joint. Mrs. Johansen was distracted and uneasy, and gave Brecken so many uncertain glances that finally Brecken asked if something was wrong. “Well, yes,” she admitted, “but let’s see about getting those staccato measures right before we discuss that, shall we?”
Only when the lesson was over and the obligatory cups of tea made their appearance would Mrs. Johansen say more. “The fact of the matter is that I’ve landed in a bit of a fix,” she said, “and I was thinking that you might be able to help.”
“Sure,” said Brecken. “What is it?”
“It’s my sister Nora up in Trenton.” The old woman sipped at her tea. “She’s got some health problems and needs to go to a hospital in Philadelphia, and she doesn’t drive, and she’s had no end of trouble trying to get there. We’re the only family either of us has left, you know, and so I’d drive her—but it’s an overnight stay, Saturday and Sunday.”
It took Brecken a moment to guess at the difficulty. “So you can’t play at the church.”
Mrs. Johansen nodded glumly. “And it’s hardly fair of me to leave poor Reverend Meryl in the lurch, you know, when she’s been so very supportive.”
The thought of going to a church ever again hadn’t been anywhere in her mind, but Brecken didn’t hesitate. “Mrs. Johansen,” she said, “do you want me to fill in for you? I don’t know the first thing about playing the organ, but I bet they have a piano.”
The old woman beamed. “Would you be willing to? I really don’t think any of my other students will do, and not too many young people want to get up early on a Sunday morning, you know. As for a piano, why, yes, they have one, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised about the organ. The finger technic is different, and you’ll have to learn how to use the pedals, but I think you’ll be able to adapt to it quickly enough, and a keyboard is a keyboard, you know.”
“I’ll have to talk to some people,” said Brecken, “and make sure I can fit it in my schedule, but I’m willing to consider it.”
“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Johansen said, looking relieved. “Perhaps you can give me a call when you find out for sure.”
She left Mrs. Johansen’s place feeling a little better. The sun was already down, though, and a cold wind hissed through the old brick buildings as she walked through Partridgeville’s downtown. When she got to Danforth Street and headed through campus, Gurnard Hall loomed up before her against the darkening sky, and that sent her thoughts veering down less welcome paths. By the time she got back to her apartment she’d decided to follow Professor Toomey’s advice and see if she could transfer to another college.
Over a dinner of red beans and rice, she talked it over with Sho. ♪I will go gladly if you wish it,♪ the shoggoth told her. Then, nervously: ♪Will I have to go out under the empty sky?♪
♪I don’t think so,♪ Brecken told her. ♪You’ll have to stay hidden during the move, so we’ll figure out some way to get you there—♪ The shoggoth language had no words for cars or trucks or moving vans, so it took her several minutes of explanation and a few glances at the lexicon before Sho understood that there were things like rooms that went from place to place, things that made the roaring noise Sho heard from outside the apartment, and that she could hide in one of them while it took her and Brecken and Brecken’s things to the new place where Brecken’s songs would be welcome.
After dinner they settled on the futon as usual, and before Brecken got to work on her assignments for her classes—she had an arrangement exercise due the next day, and two demanding counterpoint exercises due Monday—she booted up her laptop, reread Toomey’s email, went to the websites of each of the three schools he’d named, and sent each admissions office a polite email asking for applications their composition programs.
She was shaking by the time she finished. Part of that was nerves, but not all. The rest—
She wanted to get out of Partridgeville. She felt that, all at once, in a great rush of dread. She wanted to scoop up Sho in her arms, if that was what it took, and run all the way to Oklahoma or Wisconsin or Massachusetts or wherever. Part of it was the hope of finding a place for herself and her music, but there was something else.
Something waited for her in Partridgeville. She could feel it, lean and thirsty, pacing in the darkness somewhere outside the little apartment, and she felt desperately afraid.
ELEVEN
The Vach-Viraj Incantation
“GIRL, YOU SURE KNOW how to pick ‘em,” Rosalie said disconsolately.
Brecken glanced at her. They were sitting at a table in Vivaldi’s after composition class, and she was tired enough after a night of bad dreams that it took a moment for Rosalie’s words to register. “What?”
“Darren Wegener. Seriously?”
“Oh, come on.”
“Don’t give me that, girl. I saw the way the two of you smiled at each other.”
About to launch into heated denials, Brecken caught herself. If Rosalie went running down that false trail, she realized, it might keep her from asking other questions and finding some clue that would lead her to Sho. “Don’t laugh,” she said, letting her voice sound just slightly hurt. “He’s really sweet once you get to know him.”
Rosalie shook her head. “I don’t get it. What’s wrong with my cousin Rick? He’s nice, he’s cute, he’s got a good job—”
Brecken said nothing, and after a moment Rosalie said, “Okay, maybe I do get it. You’re going to do what you’re going to do.”
“Get used to it,” said Brecken. It was the wrong thing to say, she knew that the moment the words were out of her mouth, and the sudden wince that the words got from Rosalie confirmed it, but she couldn’t take them back. Nor, on reflection, did she really want to.
The next day, though, when she and Darren met over coffee in the basement of Tuchman Hall, she told him about Rosalie’s words. She wasn’t prepared by the sudden calculating look that showed on his face. “Is that going to be any kind of problem for you?” he asked.
“No,” she said. Then, impulsively: “My girlfriend’s fine with it.”
She wasn’t prepared, either, for the look of immense relief that gripped his face like a spasm. “Okay, good,” he said. Then, after glancing this way and that to be sure no one else was in earshot: “I have a boyfriend.”
That, Brecken thought, explains a
thing or two. “Okay,” she said aloud.
“I wish it was. If my folks find out I’m gay they’ll cut me off without a cent—and they snoop. They snoop a lot.” He propped his chin on his hands. “If there was any other way to pay for my degree I’d just tell them and deal with it, but you know how things are these days.”
“Of course.” She processed that. “So if you’re seen with a girl—”
“Yeah.” He propped his chin on his hands, considered her for a long moment. “In fact—” He fumbled with his cell phone, found something on it. “Melissa Hollander’s going to be playing the Goldbach Variations in town Friday evening. Want to go, my treat?”
“Sure,” Brecken said, delighted. “And thank you. That ought to be fun.”
It was, too. She put on the dress she’d bought at the mall, the dark red one with the sunburst of gold seed beads; he showed up wearing a jacket and tie, driving his battered green sedan; she spotted a parking place three blocks from the Partridgeville Masonic Temple, where the performance was being held, and they walked to the building, up the big staircase to the second floor, and into the lodge hall, where archaic emblems gazed down from the walls on rows of temporary seating and an honest-to-Bach harpsichord being tuned for the occasion. The performance was good enough that Brecken closed her eyes and let the music raise its serene architecture up to the sky, shutting out for a little while all the uncertainties that beset her. Just as delightful in another way were the looks of astonishment and consternation she fielded from Donna and Jim Domenico, apparently there on a date of their own, and from Julian Pinchbeck, of all people, who sat on the balcony, glaring down like a gargoyle on all and sundry.
It was a splendid evening, and long before it was over they were—what? Not an item, surely, for both their hearts were given to others, and no scrap of romance strayed clumsily into the space between them. Not friends, either, for they’d already gotten to that point during the brief time they’d spent practicing together and talking about music. Allies, Brecken decided later, was the right word: working together to distract his parents and her friends from facts they couldn’t handle. That the work happened to be so pleasant was, she decided, pure chance.
The Shoggoth Concerto Page 18